Douglas Sirk

That's so awful!

I wish TCM (or any channel) would show some of the non-"touchstone" movies sometime. My Sirk wishlist on the TiVo never brings up anything new. Looks like "There's Always Tomorrow" was never even on VHS? :(

so it doesn't matter what the camera is actually pointing at?

i believe "taza, son of cochise" with rock hudson is coming out on dvd.

That's so awful!
I got over it.

i believe "taza, son of cochise" with rock hudson is coming out on dvd.

He was still exploring the acting territory he staked out in Winchester 73?

xpost

not sure what you mean.

Chris Fujiwara contrasts contemporay US audiences' laughter at Sirk's films vs Tokyo viewers' reactions:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/tears-without-laughter-20080818

good article. I can't watch Sirk films in theatres, especially the Castro -- it's not that there aren't scenes in Written on the Wind where I haven't experienced totally involuntary burst of laughter, it's just that the completely out of control bursts of camp hyperbole cascade right over into a genuine emotional response, and in an audience of 800+ there's always going to be the sound of derisive laughter echoing somewhere in the theatre kind of bringing you down.

so these days it seems like Sirk is best seen with a group of friends that you're on the same page with?

hurts that there's still no "There's Always Tomorrow" on DVD, that's the one I really need to see again

Milton otm but that article reads like the Adbusters trouble with hipsters

criterion's putting out magnificent obsession at some point, apparently

as for myself i often laugh at the silliness in his movies but paradoxically it also makes me more susceptible to sympathy for his characters/situations

pink sox

I'm not sure there's a way of avoiding laughing! The laughter of a hip theater crowd signifying that they're above Sirk's little tricks is obnoxious, but I'm glad Sirk provokes these reactions. I always feel nauseated and moved, like mid eighties Bob Dylan.

Imitation of Life was shown last month in NY at a Chelsea theater screening hosted by a drag queen MC. Must to avoid.

Yes, heaven forbid a film appeal to people other than film snobs.

Good article but the problem isn't with Sirk alone; it's with practically all of classical Hollywood cinema. My students howled at Scarface (Hawks 1932) as if it "were a cross between Tex Avery and Russ Meyer." It IS a problem because it assumes the current standard of Hollywood realism will remain the standard forever, i.e. that it's not historically and culturally contingent. So I tell them exactly that which usually does the trick.

That said, laughter is never so cut and dry and thus very difficult to write about much less legislate. I started an essay on it at the beginning of the summer. But I abandoned it after a good deal of research (grrr) since I couldn't avoid coming off as a complete snob (which some might approve anyway). Or a complete hypocrite. As mad as I get when people guffaw at Hawks or even my beloved Andy Milligan, I was fully in support of the derisive snorts that greeted Jimmy Stewart's "It can't matter to you" in Vertigo. And fwiw, no one chuckled once during a screening of Imitation of Life I attended in Montréal or drew undue attention to my tears when the lights came up. (How about an article on Canadian reactions to Sirk next?)

Still, Sirk's mise-en-scene was extraordinarily critical of the characters within it, often in ways much more subtle than the infamous grabbing on to the model oil derrick. (This propensity is particularly pungent in the devastating There's Always Tomorrow which is indeed a must-see.) As such, I'm not sure the man himself would have minded some laughter. So this very carefully worded sentence may be distorting Sirk's M.O. a bit:

"Audiences’ ironic appropriation of Sirk—apart from being, like, so 1990s—thwarts the nonironic acceptance on which basis alone the films can work (as I believe they work ideally) as emotional melodramas that remain detached from the assumptions of the society they depict."

For one thing, ironic appropriation may be so 1990s, but the "ironic appropriation" of Sirk happened well before that. Also, I think "appropriation" is the wrong word here because Sirk was an ironist. If later audiences are appropriating his films ironically, then they were appropriating them the way Sirk himself conceived them. So while I agree that they're "emotional melodramas that remain detached from the assumptions of the society they depict," that detachment stems from an ironic stance Sirk takes in relation to his characters. In fact, he felt he didn't step back far enough with Imitation of Life.

And thank gawd, sez I. One of the very many things which makes it the greatest classical Hollywood film of all-time is that constant oscillation between ironic detachment and intense emotional involvement until they no longer seem like such polar opposites. If Sirk had his way, it might have come off like something by, I don't know, Fassbinder (who I'm definitely NOT dissing here).

So the laughter may be signifying not that the audience is "above Sirk's little tricks" but rather perfectly in step with them.

But if "I always feel nauseated and moved, like mid eighties Bob Dylan" isn't husband material, I don't know what is!

your text

my text?

I don't want to "legislate" vs snarky laughter, I just usually don't wanna be there when it happens.

"It can't matter to you" IS a good chuckle (tho I can hear Hitchcock's better on "The gentleman certainly know what he wants").

One of the very many things which makes it the greatest classical Hollywood film of all-time is that constant oscillation between ironic detachment and intense emotional involvement until they no longer seem like such polar opposites.

Now, see, you phrased with elegance what I was unable to an hour ago.

Oh, honey, anyone who can link mid-eighties Dylan to Sirk is elegance personified.

"The gentleman certainly know what he wants"

That is a genius line.

YOU WERE A VERY APT PUPIL

heaven forbid a film appeal to people other than film snobs.

Eric, the folks who howl their way through old movies at Film Forum and "Chelsea Classics" drag screenings are not run-of-the-mill hoi polloi, who I think do a better job of entering into the spirit of a period film. They are hipster assholes (and in the all-gay screenings, unbearable Marys) who should be home watching contemporary "golden age" TV.

(This doesn't even apply exclusively to period films -- the FF audience pretty much ruined the last Werner Herzog movie)

http://www.criterion.com/content/images/full_boxshot/457_box_348x490.jpg

In January

Magnificent cover!

Damnit, I just scanned the thread and now I really want to see There's Always Tomorrow, which of course still isn't out on any stateside release.

I can burn you a copy if you want.

Cool. I'll drop a line soon.

Swoon on that DVD news.

OK, I wouldn't blame an audience for laughing through MO.

I always get the pipe-smoking prophet in that movie confused with the sub-genius guy.

Maybe he doesn't even smoke a pipe, but he has the same crazy glint in his eye.

Lots of funny stuff in Rock Hudson's Home Movies about that dude constantly touching Rock. Damn good actor, Otto Kruger. He played a VERY different, downright evil character in Hitchcock's Saboteur. You wanted to beat up his face in that one, you did. And for the millions of Joan Crawford freaks here, he stepped aside so JC could have Clark Gable in Chained.

OK, I wouldn't blame an audience for laughing through MO.

I laugh throughout every Sirk movie, but in the good way.

SPOILERS

Please tell me you don't laugh when she gets hit by the car...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/movies/homevideo/20dvds.html?_r=1

otto krueger's character in this is truly insane